We spent the day either at IKEA or assembling something from IKEA.  I have decided I do not like IKEA very much, but I’m sure when my fingers are not sore from screwing a million screws into holes that are too small I will probably go back to liking it… maybe.  I could not wait to have an IKEA nearby… I dreamed about it countless days when we lived in Morocco and all we had was a knock off brand called KITEA.  But then it has taken us four trips to the store because something was either out of stock, needed to be remeasured, ordered, or something!  When we finally got almost everything we paid to have it delivered because the boxes were huge, but somehow they damaged two closets… they told us they were demolished.  Then we tried to assemble the one they did deliver only to have it literally crumble in our hands… think fake wood splintering, screws flying across the room and everyone ducking for cover.  Scary!

We went back today to try to see if the remaining items were back in stock and to find out how to return the pile of rubble.  They won’t take it back unless we bring it in and they won’t pay for it to be picked up either.  Oh, and the demolished closets that hadn’t been delivered that we had been waiting for days to receive?  They told us we had to get them ourselves and bring them to the delivery counter… that would have been valuable information!  What if we hadn’t asked?  Oh, and then we bought a couple more big items and they refused to add them to the closet delivery, so we had to pay for additional delivery even though the same guy put them on the same truck and brought them to the same flat.  Now that is customer service, baby!

Well, now most everything is assembled and I’ll probably get over feeling jaded by the morning… I hope.  Other than our IKEA woes we are having a great time and have met several of our neighbors who are all very warm and welcoming, which is so not what everyone told us to expect.  Did I mention that we are a five minute walk from the photo above?  It is the famous shopping street called the Stroget and is rumored to be the longest shopping street in all of Scandinavia!  Good neighbors and good shopping- now that is something to celebrate!

So, I am off to chill a bit before tomorrow comes and I have to think about paint!  Heehee!

Good morning and happy Labor Day to all my American friends!  I hope you all had a great weekend!  Are you ready to begin another week full of inspiration?  I want to share a project with you that I began a few weeks ago.  It is quite near and dear to my heart, so let me me explain what prompted me to begin this endeavor.

I believe in living every day as though it is the last… in saying what should be said today rather than waiting for tomorrow.  Although I do not think obsessively about dying and what comes after this life, there is the reality that we all must face… eventually our life will come to an end.  Well, with my recent return to scrapbooking I really started asking myself why I should spend my time putting words and photos on paper.  Is it worth the investment of time, money, and energy?

I think it is.  I hope to live a life of legacy… nothing I put on paper has not been said to my children in person… but I also like the idea of giving my children a book full of words of wisdom.  Perhaps down the road they will find encouragement through my words and it will remind them of who they are and where they came from.  Who knows?  Maybe one day my grandchildren will find a connection to these life lessons and even when time and tastes have changed and my method of archiving is dated… well, hopefully they will appreciate the words and photos.

So, for today, my life lesson is this: “Love Life.  You only get one chance to get it right, so love the one you get, find beauty in the little things and life it to the fullest.”  I guess for me I look at these precious children that have been entrusted to me and I see that the world awaits them, but sometimes the world is not kind and sometimes life does not appear fair.  I hope my children will know that no matter what comes their way, they should hold their heads up high and appreciate all the little things that make each of our lives so beautiful.

I have more to share with you all if this is something you are interested in?  Also, I have recently had quite a few requests for more tips and tutorials. Is that something that interests you all as well?  I am still operating on limited supplies, but that just means that some of the tips I have up my sleeve could be easily replicated without expensive tools.

Before I go, I want to thank you all for your sweet words regarding our new flat.  It is such an exciting time for us!  I promise I will have photos to share with you all soon.  Wouldn’t it be so great if we could have a Housewarming Party and you all could come for a visit?  I’ve been brainstorming about ways that we might be able to do that online.  Any ideas?

We are all smiles and full of happy hearts as we end this week.  Last night in that brief moment between our heads hitting our pillows and our dreams taking us to faraway places we could not help but count our blessings.  We actually did it… we actually got all the way from Morocco to America to Denmark…  Our dream has come true… we are back in Europe, back in city life, and back to the lifestyle that we grew to love so much  in Barcelona.  We are in the center of Copenhagen, the center of the action, but we are tucked away in the quietest oasis… and we are thrilled beyond comprehension!  We’ve enjoyed long strolls near the harbor and short commutes to school.  So we are off to a weekend full of assembling furniture, choosing paint colors, and all the other fun stuff that comes with moving into a new home.  I leave you with a few links that have inspired me…

Sweet Paul Magazine (and it’s free!)

An awesome flower tutorial at Paper Poppies.

Tutorial by Natalie Jost: Fabric Tape using a Xyron Machine!

Happy Weekend, my sweet friends!

It’s moving day!  I can hardly believe it!  Just saying it makes me feel all giddy and breathless.  As if all the excitement of moving is not enough, today is my nephew’s birthday and I thought you all might enjoy a little break from all the girly femininity that I usually have to share.  I had an absolute blast making this card for my Star Wars crazed nephew.  Even though I am so sad that we do not get to celebrate his birthday with him in person, I hope he will enjoy getting something special in the mail.  Do you remember that thrill when you were little… heck, I still love getting something other than a bill in the mail!  But when you are a kid, getting something in the mail with your own name on it is pretty awesome!  My Mom always taught me to write “Mr. and Mrs. so and so” for the name so even when I send something to a child I just cannot help but do the same.  I wonder if they notice?

Well, I’m hoping to get our stuff over to our new place and get the internet up and running so we can skype with the birthday boy today.  Like I always say… “Load ‘em up!  We’re moving out!”

supplies: Cardstock: PaperTrey Ink; Patterned Papers: Impulse from Bliss Collection by Crate Paper, Star Wars by Creative Imaginations; Letters: EK success

I’ve got it bad… this “unpackingitis”…really bad.  We move in tomorrow… and I cannot help but look back to what I was feeling almost nine months ago when we began the process of packing up our house in Morocco.  I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of my “packingitis” that set in months before my husband accepted his new job in Denmark.

I was so quick to offer advice to all the restless souls of the world…

And then one day it finally hit me that we were moving… leaving the place that we had called home and going to a new place.  I think somewhere between those cardboard boxes, flights from here to there, and a whole lot of packing in between… well, I just got lost in the momentum of the adventure.  One minute I felt disoriented and the next I was determined that I knew exactly where I was going.  Even now I feel that familiar fear that comes with each move… will we like our new place?  Will we make friends?  Will we be happy?  I’m feeling pretty good about things and I truly believe that the answer is yes to all those questions, but you know… there is only one way to find out!

It’s Monday and I am so happy because this week is the week we finally move into our own place!  To say that we are excited would be a gross understatement.  After nearly nine months of living out of suitcases, in temporary rentals, or someone else’s house we are finally moving into a place that has a three year lease.  Three years.  Did you all hear that?  It thrills me and terrifies me all at the same time.  We have not lived in one place for three years in our eleven years of marriage.  In fact, we have not lived anywhere longer than two and that was a very big record for us!  I cannot even begin to imagine what it will be like to live somewhere long enough that I actually grow weary of my decor… because our moves have rarely been down the street and have oftentimes involved selling much of what we own.

And speaking of what we own… I know you were all excited for us that we were going to get our shipment from the States this week, but it’s a no go.  The agent we have been working with had the date wrong.  It didn’t arrive on August 26th, but isn’t expected to make it to Copenhagen until September 26th.  That was kind of a big booboo if you ask me and we were pretty upset at first.  My biggest disappointment was having to tell the kids that they were going to have to wait another month for their toys to arrive, but they took it in stride just as I should have known they would.  These Traveling Kiddos are one flexible breed!  I am so glad we found them a few toys at the flea markets over the last few weeks… it has kept them pretty busy and happy too.

Our land lords are moving from the apartment and have been kind enough to leave behind a few things, so I think we will be okay in the meantime. We are crossing our fingers that today is the day that our shipment leaves Morocco.  Wouldn’t it be so great if everything arrived at the same time?

Well, enough rambling about moving!  I have a quick project to show you all today.  I made this pin with a product you might remember from last Friday… Inchie squares!  I love wearing pins and brooches, so when I saw these little Inchie Art squares, I just could not help but make a pin with them!  They act like chipboard when you glue paper to them, except that they were sturdier and take the paper beautifully.  I used my Out of the Box set by Schlosser Designs for the main image and accented with some of my favorite paper out of my Scarlet Lime kit.  I was thrilled with the result and plan on making more of these just as soon as we unpack at our new place… see, I’m so excited about moving that I cannot help but bring it up again!  I’ll try really hard to stick to creative projects this week because I have so much to share with you, but hopefully after Wednesday I can share some photos of our bare bones flat… if you want, of course!

Can you believe it is Friday again?  Not only is it time to break free from the work week, but it is also time for another Embellish Magazine Challenge.  You are sure to love the amazing product we are featuring with this challenge.  Maybe I shouldn’t tell this story about myself, but since it’s Friday… well, we all need a good laugh sometimes, right?  Our sponsor this week is Inchie Art and they very generously sent each of the design team some of their amazing squares to work with.

The day they arrived here in our little town of Denmark I was standing in the kitchen in my pj’s around nine in the morning… alright, alright… it was noon.  Happy?  So I was standing there in my pj’s, which THANK GOD were just a comfy pair of pants and a tee while making the boys some lunch.  All of a sudden something whizzed past the window and I kid you not… I just about left an imprint on the ceiling!  It was about at that same moment that the delivery boy looked right in at me with my hair all messy, pj’s all sloppy, and my hand holding my heart… or at least I’m hoping that’s what it looked like I was holding.  Obviously I didn’t want to answer the door, but hellooo he had already seen me and was sitting three feet away on the other side of the door waiting.  Embarrassed, I opened the door and tried to act all cool like guys on bikes regularly ride past my window and I always dress like this in the middle of the day.  As I shut the door I sooo did not return to the kitchen but made my son go check and make sure he had left.  With trembling hands (yes!  He startled me that bad!) I went back to making lunch but I was ready to duck at any moment if he decided to come back!

Anyways!  Back to Inchie Art!  I had never heard of their product, but I was instantly inspired upon opening my package.  These little squares may be small, but they are downright cool!  You can pretty much do anything you want to them… stamp them, paint them, emboss them… you choose it!

You can see here that I stamped the black squares with Versacraft ink and added them as an embellishment…

And here I trimmed down the notecards to create a journaling note for my page.

They are quite ingenious and my mind was reeling with the possibilities.  Today I am sharing two ways you can use them, but I have more to share with you next week.  You can also see what our design team came up with… these ladies seriously inspire me!  So, pop on over to Embellish Magazine to play along and have a very wonderful weekend… might I suggest staying in your pj’s until noon?

Some days it feels like a million years ago that we were living in our house in suburban America and other days it feels like it was just yesterday. While we were in the States recently I dug out a few of my favorite photos from storage and brought them with me… because some days I feel a little homesick and a little disconnected from my past… which I suppose is one of the prices one must pay when moving around so much.  These photos use to make me sad because for a long, long time I missed my house, but now they bring me a smile.  This day in particular was so sweet because my sister-in-law and mother-in-law came by and we had a total “girl” day of dressing up our little princess and taking ridiculous amounts of photos of her.  I have been hoarding this clear doily sheet by Hambly Studios and I thought it was the perfect background for our Traveling Girl when she was only 3 years old.  I also had a lot I wanted to say about this day so rather than trying to cram it all onto the front, I hid the journaling behind the photo on the back side.  Just a little tip I thought you all might find useful!  Thanks for stopping by today!  Be sure to check back tomorrow. We have another Embellish Magazine Challenge that I cannot wait to share with you all!

Supplies: Paper: Hambly Studios, Crate Paper; stickers: Hambly Studios, Crate Paper, October Afternoon, and American Crafts; brads: SEI; pearls: KaiserCraft

This week has been busy… crazy busy.  Naively we visited the local Kommune, which is the government office that helps us find doctors, schools, and other things for our area.  We thought signing the boys up for school/childcare would be simple.  But it wasn’t.  Well, signing the paperwork was easy, but we were a little disheartened to realize that our littlest does not have a place anywhere and must go on a waiting list.  We were told that he would be placed somewhere in Copenhagen within two months, but there was no guarantee that it would be anywhere near our new flat.

I have to admit that my imagination might have run away like a bullet train as I pictured us leaving the flat sometime around 7am and bicycling the city for two hours to drop everyone off before scurrying over to our language courses… and then as soon as we finished… cycling the city once again to retrieve everyone.  Honestly, we are feeling a little stressed because we do not know what we will do.  If we ever want to see each other for the next year or so, we really need to take our classes at the same time.  I hate the thought of one of us taking morning classes while the other studies in the evenings.  My mom always told me I was a bit dramatic, but the way I figure is that it keeps life a little more interesting as well!

It’s out of our hands at this point and all we can do is hope, pray, and trust that everything will work out… just as things usually do in life (a bit of wisdom my Dad gave me… perhaps to balance out my dramatic side?)  So, I hope you don’t mind, but today I just needed to unwind a bit.  I’ve had a few good laughs over some of your responses regarding my post on nudity over at Traveling Tribe… it’s amazing how passionate some of us get when we talk about taking our makeup off or worse yet… our clothes!

So, today we are simply gathering inspiration.  These images spoke to me so much… the light, the dreaminess, the serenity, the timelessness… it all appears so effortless.  These are qualities that are inspiring our work lately and I thought you might enjoy them as well!  I’ll be back tomorrow to show you more of what I have been up to!

1. Lucy Snowe Photography 2. skippy designs 3. Sea Unicorn 4. japonicas

Being a Mom is the most wonderful and amazing thing that has ever happened to me, but some days it is just plain tiring.  Our littlest Tribesmen seems to have the energy level of three wild oxen combined into one very compact, and might I add cute, package.  He seems to have been born ready to go, go, go!

Not much has changed since we took this photo last year… well, except that he runs faster, climbs higher, and jumps a whole lot further than I think is normal for his age… because SURELY this is not normal!  I was fearful of how we would keep him entertained all summer with only the belongings we could stuff into our suitcases but we’ve discovered that a few cars and a stroll around the block go a long, long way.

Not only that, but he has just grown more cuddly and it melts my heart that he only wants “Mama” right now.  Oh, and he loves to give kisses… to us, to stuffed animals… and even the doggies on the street get them from afar.

He is such a keeper… and even though I may collapse into my bed at night in total exhaustion from tending to three kids, moving from here to there, and doing all that it takes to keep everyone safe, fed, loved on, bathed, clothed… well, you know… all that mom stuff… I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.  Not even a meal without little fingers running through my guacamole, someone inevitably wanting to sit on my lap, getting up exactly three thousand two hundred and seventeen times for one more cup of milk and seconds of what I have yet to have firsts of.  One glance over at the Traveling Girl and I realize that it is brief, that all stages shall pass, and little kisses cover over a multitude of sins.